Monday, September 15, 2014

THE GREAT RACE: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1965) Warner Archive Collection

Played strictly in caricature, and with its heart firmly affixed as an
homage to the zany antics from the silent era, Blake Edwards’ The Great Race (1965) remains an
absurdly amusing transgression against the more serious permutations of
entertainment infiltrating the decade; also a pointedly obtuse send-up to 60’s radical
feminism, astutely lampooned in the ironic parallel between its more aggressive
contemporary campaigners and the film’s own Susan B. Anthony, Maggie Dubois
(Natalie Wood) – a nonsensical, if aspiring, and occasionally perspiring,
‘working woman’ - given over to rambunctious camp. It isn’t hard to figure out
which side of the argument Blake Edwards sentiments fall; Donfeld’s costuming
for our forthright, strong-minded female who wants the vote, but is willing to
settle in marriage to the Great Leslie (Tony Curtis as an undeniable paragon of
bygone masculine virtues), leaving very little to the imagination. Wood
actually spends most of the film’s second act scantily clad in a vibrant rose
corset that pushes and plumps out her already ample bosom. Wood is a fine
actress. Alas, The Great Race is not
her finest performance by a long shot. She often appears stilted; her
mannerisms deliberately meant to evoke a sense of theatric grandiosity, but
somehow less authentic than a silly wink and a nod to that era when actors
gesticulated for their pay.

The film has far better success with Dorothy Provine; all too briefly glimpsed
as sultry Lily Olay; a feisty saloon entertainer in Boracho; a forgotten
backwater bedecked in all the vintage trappings of a John Wayne western.
Provine is a thoroughly captivating addition to this cast, utterly superb as
she belts out “He Shouldn't-A, Hadn't-A,
Oughtn't-A Swang on Me”; one of two hummable songs penned by the
irreplaceable, Henry Mancini, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The other is ‘The Sweetheart Tree’, Mancini writing an
exquisite ballad that draws heavily on a Pianola influence. It’s about the most
authentic thing in this period picture. Director Edwards is conspiring with Arthur
A. Ross on the screenplay. But it’s something of a kerfuffle, begun as a
vainglorious turn-of-the-century pastiche, under the misguided pretext to tell
us all about the era of the daredevil; when men of indomitable spirits and
disposable cash vied for supremacy in costly globe-trotting adventures to
satisfy their own boredoms and captivate the impoverished masses with their free-spirited
escapes into these flights of fancy.

We get all this and more in The
Great Race; a film immeasurably blessed by Fernando Carrere’s production design
and art direction; also, Russell Harlan’s sumptuous and eye-filling Technicolor
cinematography. Carrere bids – with varying degrees of success and accuracy –
to recapture the period, as well as a host of European locations. The Great Race did shoot in Salzburg
and Paris; also, Big Bear Lake, Alabama Hills and Sonora California, before
confining most of its action to sound stages over at Warner Brothers in Burbank;
also a few obvious outdoor sets on the old MGM back lot. Alas, footage shot
within the studio’s confines belies Blake Edwards attempt to recreate a
marvelous travelogue a la the likes of Michael Todd’s Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) or even Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines (1965), another
1900’s cross-country/transcontinental escapist yarn, made and released the same
year as The Great Raceand with
roughly as much (or as little) appeal and longevity as cinema art.

Despite its evident virtues, The
Great Race is decidedly second rate as a roadshow experience on several
levels. The film is affectionately dedicated to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy;
Edward’s ‘everything old is new again’
approach to the material leaving no stone unturned. But the recycling of this
famous team’s sight gags (the polar bear sketch is an obvious swipe) – along
with others re-orchestrated for the movie – fails to evoke nostalgia. Instead,
it almost completely reminds us just how bygone and never-to-be-forgotten the
silent era remains. For starters, the reteaming of Tony Curtis with Jack Lemmon
(the two had played exquisitely off each other in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot 1959) is lacking the
same intangible chemistry herein; the Ross/Edwards screenplay pitting the boys
against each other; Lemmon cast as the Great Leslie’s arch nemesis, Professor
Fate, whose sidekick, Maximilian Meen (Peter Falk) is less than hilarious.
Lemmon is having a deliriously good time playing the maniacal Fate; something
of a grotesque satire of Boris – the handle-bar moustache twirling villain from
The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show
(1961-64). But only he can appreciate
this farce. It is grating, to say the least.

There’s not enough charm to endear us to Fate; not even to make us
understand why the Great Leslie – as noble, virtuous and carefree as he is –
would risk his own life and victory in the race to save the despicable Fate
from…well, his own in the movie’s
third act; a horrendous rip off of The
Prisoner of Zenda (1937), right down to its crossed-swords duel, done
partially in silhouette, between our hero and Baron Rolfe Von Stuppe (Ross
Martin). All the characters, from Keenan Wynn’s Hezekiah Sturdy (Leslie’s
confident and travelling companion) to frenetic newspaper editor, Henry
Goodbody (Arthur O’Connell) – who suffers a nervous breakdown and is committed
to an asylum by his portly suffragette wife, Hester (Vivian Vance, of Ethel
Mertz/I Love Lucy 1951-57 fame) are
stick-figures at best. I suppose, that’s part of The Great Race’s charm; the story relying on the actors’ presence,
rather than character development, to carry the weight. Actually, beyond the
initial setup of Leslie proposing a lengthy competition from New York to Paris
– by way of one of the most bizarre road maps ever selected for such an
excursion – there’s not much of ‘story’ going on in The Great Race either.

This one’s played strictly for the guffaws; Blake Edwards ladling on the
nostalgia just a tad too thick for my tastes. While naturalism was never the
pursuit of the film or its director, it’s a crying shame more subtlety wasn’t
applied by the actors; in effect, to surprise us with the campier moments,
rather than repeatedly slug us over the brain with an, at times, lethally
heavy-handed ‘look how funny we are,
aren’t we?’ approach to even the most menial vignettes bridging the journey
by carrier pigeon. Yes, The Great Raceis meant to be episodic. But its pratfalls and wide-eyed leering grow tiresome
after about the first ten minutes; particularly Jack Lemmon’s seriously
apoplectic scoundrel, who teeters from gloomy hatred for our hero – simply
because he is the hero – and a sort
of emasculated, Freudian ‘mama’s boy’ who prefers Maximillian’s company to
Maggie’s. At 160 minutes, there’s just too much ‘I can’t believe they did that’ and not nearly enough ‘wasn’t that clever?’ to win our hearts
and fortify our funny bones with the proverbial good tickle.

It’s a shame too, because Mel Brooks would later illustrate the virtues
of a world with no dialogue in his Silent
Movie (1976…and pardon me – one word, ‘no’
uttered by – who else? – mime, Marcel Marceau: simply hilarious!). But no such
sparks of brilliance seem to have inspired Blake Edwards on The Great Race. And indeed, with
dialogue, the yuk-yuk sight gags in this movie (that might have worked without
the benefit of sound) now seem to get weighted down and remade as unfunny
tripe, precisely because they are
stereophonically rendered. Edwards throws everything at the screen. The best
vignettes in The Great Race are a
no-holds-barred brawl inside Boracho’s Palace Saloon (a chance for some of
Hollywood’s most proficient stuntmen to show off their truly mesmerizing and
highly dangerous craft as they total the inside of a sound stage) and the
lavishly appointed pie fight a la The
Three Stooges; again, staged in Burbank, in which no custard, raspberry or
lemon meringue is left untouched. The bar fight still gets my vote; chiefly
because all the principles are engaged, and the delicious, Dorothy Provine
(terribly underused in the movie) has no quam about rolling up her
chiffon-yellow sleeves to get down and dirty with the boys. She takes her lumps
on the butt – twice; sailing over the side of a pair of breakaway tables;
tossed around like a ragdoll by her desperado brute of a boyfriend, Texas Jack
(Larry Storch). Ray Rice…are you listening?

The Great Race does have its
moments. But it takes far too long for the story to get off the ground; the
Ross/Edwards’ screenplay bungling its first act with a series of botched
competitions between the Great Leslie (a man constipated in his verbal
communication and interactions) and Professor Fate, who suffers from chronic
verbal diarrhea. Tony Curtis gives one of his most restrained performances.
It’s actually refreshing not to see Curtis overreaching to impress, as he
frequently did throughout his movie career.

Alas, Jack Lemmon has not taken
this cue from his partner. I’ve always admired Lemmon for his comedic genius
and timing. But both are woefully off in The
Great Race; Lemmon’s high octane energy, no match for his truly painful
interactions with Peter Falk, who seems even less to be enjoying his position
as the fop’s fool. And then there’s our third wheel – Natalie Wood – to
reconsider. Pert, plucky, and frequently grating on the nerves (if decidedly,
never on the eye), Wood clobbers her part with an interminable amount of feminist
cheek and caustic venom; inexplicably dissolving like a cube of sugar when
finally forced into a locked embrace by our proverbial ‘good guy’ (Curtis’
Leslie is perpetually clad from head to toe in virginal white…just in case
there was any doubt as to his virtue and/or integrity). We’re seeing some very fine
actors in this movie. Alas, ‘joyless’
is the best way I can describe most of The
Great Race.

We begin on an open airfield where the Great Leslie is preparing to be
bound in straightjacket and left dangling upside down from a cord attached to
an unmanned hot-air balloon. The gathered crowd loves it, particularly several
adoring female fans, who rush the podium for one last passionate farewell kiss
before Leslie is sent into the skies, presumably to his death. Not far off,
Prof. Fate and Maximillian lie in wait, having concealed themselves in a tank
camouflaged as a rather large bush. Fate unveils a harpoon and commands Max to
fire it into the balloon. It’s a bull’s eye hit and almost immediately the
balloon begins to lose altitude. Not to worry, however. This is, after all, the
‘great’ Leslie; a man of collected calm and inimitable manly grace, who
effortlessly slips from his restraints, straps on a parachute, and leaps to
safety from the descending balloon, much to Fate’s angry chagrin.

A short while later, we catch up to Leslie again, this time attempting
to break a speedboat record; Fate and Max setting an early prototype of a
sound-seeking torpedo after Leslie’s boat. Alas, in attempting to make their
quick getaway, Fate and Max’s model-T backfires several times; the bomb honing
in on that sound instead, leaping from the water and pursuing Fate’s car to an
inevitable conclusion. Fate is, of
course, beside himself. He desperately wants to rival and surpass Leslie’s
feats of daring with one of his own. In this mad dash to outdo the perfect male
specimen, Fate concocts a manned rocket probe he plans to shoot down the
railroad tracks at lightning speed. Too bad the rocket proves much too
powerful, blasting Fate and Max into the air before running out of steam and
nose diving them back to the earth. In the meantime, Leslie has latched on to
the next big thing; a great race from New York to Paris; by far, the most spectacular
transatlantic crossing yet proposed, much less attempted.

Convincing the Webber Motor Car Company to construct a new automobile
expressly for the race – the ‘Leslie Special’ – Leslie’s engineering triumph is
challenged when Fate sets out to create an even more impressive – if sinister –
vehicle from scratch, stealing parts from some of the best auto manufacturers.
The Hannibal 8 is a sort of Franken-Chrysler; part tank/part car: all Fate,
complete with a front loading cannon, a heat-seeking torpedo (ironically, never
used in the film) and rear smoke screen (decidedly, overused whenever Fate
cannot figure out any other way to distract his competitors). Interestingly, the
‘Leslie Special’ was built at Warner Brothers to evoke memories of the Thomas Flyer;
the actual car that had won the real 1908 New York to Paris race.

In the meantime, overbearing woman’s crusader, Maggie Dubois has
infiltrated the front offices of the New York Sentinel newspaper, handcuffed to
the men’s room in the hopes her shenanigans will endear her to its
editor-in-chief, Henry Goodbody. Henry is, however, not about to let any woman
dictate to him, ordering his copyeditor, Frisbee (Marvin Kaplan) to have Maggie
arrested. The edict touches off a firestorm of unwanted publicity, the
suffragettes – fronted by Henry’s own wife, Hester, parading up and down the
square, then inside the hallways; demanding equality. Maggie overwhelms Henry
with the promise of getting the intimate story by entering the ‘great race’
herself as a competitor.

Maggie’s first prospect, to lure Leslie into having her along for the
ride in his car, is crushed when both Leslie and his trusted travelling
companion, Hezekiah Sturdy, proclaim an automobile race is no place for a
woman. Undaunted, Maggie attempts to broker favor with Fate, sneaking into his
heavily guarded shop, chased by a pack of wild Great Danes, and inadvertently blowing
up Fate’s garage with the Hannibal 8 still inside. Hardly dissuaded, Maggie now
manages to secure her own ride for the race, packing up her note pad and
photography equipment in the backseat to document the adventures that lay
ahead.

The six-car launch is interrupted when Max sabotages three competitors;
one crashing into a store front, another losing its transmission on the road,
and still another overturning, then having its’ wheels pop off. Alas, in his
zeal to wreck the chances of anyone finishing the race, Max has also
ridiculously sabotaged the Hannibal 8, leaving Maggie and Leslie as the only
competitors to proceed to the next round of competition. Later, in the middle of the desert, Maggie’s
car breaks down and Leslie, being the noble gentleman that he is, graciously
offers her transport to the next refueling station; a forgotten western outpost
called Boracho. The delay with Maggie allows Fate to gain a minor lead, arriving
first in Boracho and presented with the key to the city by its Mayor (Hal
Smith). All Fate wants is enough gasoline to propel his Hannibal 8 onto the
next length of the journey. But the Mayor assures Fate he will receive nothing
until the dawn. The town has planned a lavish celebration to mark the event.
Fate manages to sidestep the Mayor, but later runs out of gas and is forced to
concede he must remain in town until morning.

When Leslie arrives in Boracho he is greeted with minor hostility until
he graciously accepts the honor to partake in the festivities planned for the
evening. That night, at the town’s local saloon, Leslie, Hezekiah and Maggie
are treated like royalty; the entertainer, Lily Olay serenading the
rambunctious crowd with a rip-roaring ditty that brings down the house –
literally. For Lily ‘belongs’ to Texas Jack, a notorious desperado who manages
to start one of the biggest brawls in screen history, believing Leslie has designs
on his girl. Actually, it’s the other way around, creating a minor rivalry
between Lily and Maggie, who gets the upper hand (and upper cut, later in the
fight) planting a fist on Lil’ to send her toppling to the floor.

In all the hullabaloo, Fate manages to steal the necessary gas he needs
to fuel the Hannibal 8, blowing up the rest of the stockpile, thus ensuring
Leslie does not follow him. To Fate’s chagrin, Maggie has snuck aboard the
Hannibal 8. He ditches her in the middle of nowhere. But the next afternoon,
Maggie is once more rescued by Leslie, who has hitched a team of horses to pull
his car to the next outpost; Grommet, where he intends to send a wire to ask
for more gas. This, however, will take time and give Fate a considerable lead.
Thus, Maggie offers to expedite the time it will take to order the gas and have
it sent to Grommet, by sending a message ahead of them via carrier pigeon so
that the train and Leslie’s car will arrive in Grommet at the same time.

Arriving in Grommet, Leslie is bribed by Maggie into her accompanying
him on the next length of the journey…or she won’t sign for the consignment of
gasoline. Hezekiah has had quite enough of Maggie’s scheming. He bitterly
informs Leslie he must chose who will continue the race with him. For Leslie,
the choice is quite simple. So, Maggie pretends to surrender and get on board
the train, asking Hezekiah if he will help with her luggage. Instead, she
handcuffs Hezekiah to a seat on the train, returning to Leslie and lying
Hezekiah has decided to quit and go back to New York. A brief while later, her
rouse backfires, when Leslie and Maggie meet up with Hezekiah in Alaska; also,
with Fate and Max who have managed the next length ahead of them by a very
narrow margin. Fate kidnaps Maggie, hurrying to the next destination; Russia. The
two cars are caught in a violent blizzard, Fate and Max visited by a polar
bear, forcing them into a toppled heap inside the backseat of Leslie’s car. The
foursome huddle together to keep warm, awakening early the next morning only to
realize they’ve been cut adrift from the mainland, now drifting on a block of
ice in the middle of the frigid ocean. Will they survive? Intermission.

So far, The Great Race has been
a consistently plotted affair. Alas, to expedite the journey from America to
Europe (we’re already 83 minutes into the movie by now), screenwriters, Ross
and Edwards devise a rather shoddy connecting device; Maggie using her trained
carrier pigeons to send updates about their progress to the New York Sentinel;
Edwards frequently cutting away to a close-up of the Sentinel’s latest headline
being read with great interest by Henry Goodbody. Thus, we move into the
movie’s half-baked European adventure; Fate, Max and Maggie arriving mere
moments ahead of Leslie and Hezekiah; met with an ominously stern reaction
until Maggie – who speaks fluent Russian – declares a celebration in order;
Fate and Max hoisted on the shoulders of the merry villagers and carried inside
the local watering hole.

Once again, we cut to the New York Sentinel, now overseen by Hester
Goodbody who, it seems, has had her husband committed to the state asylum for a
much need rest – also, to convince him to allow women in the workplace…or else.
Cut again, this time to Salzburg, Austria, mimicking one of those mythical
Ruritanian European principalities – this one named, ‘Pottsdorf’. The kingdom
is presided over by a foppish Crown Prince, Hapnick (also played by Jack
Lemmon). Fate, Max and Maggie pause for badly needed repairs to the Hannibal 8;
Max eyeing Maggie as she takes a nude swim/bath in the nearby lake (so
obviously shot on the old MGM back lot in the same forest where Leslie Caron’s
Gigi warbled the last few bars of ‘The
Parisians’. I mean, they didn’t even try to weed out the Californian
tropical vegetation, not indigenous to the supposedly European landscape).

Unfortunately, fate seems to have caught up with Prof. Fate; the
rebellious Baron Rolfe von Stuppe, struck by the uncanny resemblance between
Fate and Hapnick, now taking the trio hostage to his isolated schloss on the
Rhine. The Baron and General Kuhster (George Macready) force Fate to
impersonate the Prince for the King’s coronation. Afterward, Kuhster will
instruct Fate to abdicate the throne, thereby allowing the rebel government
under Stuppe’s rule to take control of Pottsdorf. The Ross/Edwards screenplay
now moves into its fairly transparent rip-off of Anthony Hope’s 1894 novel, The Prisoner of Zenda. Max, posing as a monk from a nearby monastery,
encourages Leslie to rescue Fate and Maggie; also, Hezekiah who has been found
out by the Baron while skulking around the castle late at night and is being
tortured in the dungeon. The Great Leslie and the Baron duel with crossed
swords, then sabers; a flashy display of swordsmanship, paying an almost
verbatim photographic homage to David O. Selznick’s 1937 movie version of Zenda,
right down to the cutaway shadows on the wall.

Unable to free Fate from his impersonation of the King, the coronation
takes place. Fate is forewarned by Max that Leslie – who has managed to rescue
the real prince in the nick of time – is on his way to the cathedral to expose
the bait and switch. Hurrying from the church with Max hiding beneath his
King’s train, Fate takes refuge in a nearby bakery preparing a vast assortment
of pastries for the post-coronation feast. A hideous pie fight breaks out after
Fate take a tumble into the nearly six foot torte made for the palace
inaugural; the various pastry chefs incensed and picking up their pies to do
battle. Leslie, the real prince, the Baron, Maggie and General Kushter all get
their just desserts – literally – and
in the kisser. But the walloping of creams, custards and other various fillings
is more grotesque than riotous; the scene devolving into an abject waste of
food.

Escaping across the countryside, Leslie decides to set up camp for the
night in a forest; acknowledging Maggie as an emancipated woman, only to plant
a rather sexist kiss on her for which she returns a sizable wallop to Leslie’s
cheek. This leaves him stunned and confused. What’s a man in love to do? The
next day, while the two furiously debate a woman’s place in society, Fate gets
the upper hand in the race. But he makes an incalculable error by misreading
the map en route to the Eiffel Tower; Leslie easily managing to make it to the
famed Parisian landmark first. At the last possible moment, Leslie deliberately
throws the race to prove to Maggie he really is in love with her.

Fate is overjoyed as he effortlessly sails past their stalled vehicle;
awarded the silver loving cup and showered with ticker tape streamers and
confetti. Sadly, he is unable to relish his victory, knowing Leslie ‘let’ him
win. Outraged, Fate refuses his prize and instead challenges Leslie to another
race – from Paris to New York. The Parisians immediately erect another banner
to mark the start; Leslie and his new bride, along with Hezekiah, boarding the
Leslie Special and taking off on their first length before Fate and Max can
even get underway. Fate instructs Max to fire the newly installed jet propulsion
rockets that will presumably hurl them to victory at lightning speed. But in
the film’s penultimate shot, an overview of Paris with the Eiffel plainly
visible, the sudden explosion is enough to topple its girders to the ground in
a cloud of dust.

The Great Raceis idiotic
good fun. But it lacks the essential spark of crazy excitement to catapult it
into the upper echelons of screen entertainment. Honestly, there just isn’t
enough ebullience to sustain its hefty 160 minute runtime. I get it. Blake
Edward’s has given us a stereophonic/Technicolor and widescreen sendup to those
gloriously obtuse silent B&W screen spectacles a la The Keystone Cops,
Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and yes, even Laurel and Hardy. There are also
elements of every road movie you’ve ever seen in The Great Race – with nods to Frank Capra’s masterpiece, It Happened One Night (1934) and
Stanley Kramer’s It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad,
Mad World (1963). But the sight gags are mostly ill-served by the
inclusions of sound, color and expanding the image horizontally. What was
hilarious as slapstick in the 1920’s looks decidedly out of place in the
1960’s. Yes, it’s still homage; but not
an altogether successful one, and not at all well-received when it had its
premiere.

To some extent, Blake Edwards was given the green light to make The Great Race because his previous two
movies (Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1961,
and The Pink Panther 1963) had been
so wildly successful with audiences and critics alike. Initially, The Great Race was planned as a $6
million dollar extravaganza for the Mirisch Company, financed through United
Artists. However, when UA balked at the escalating budget, the project migrated
over to Warner Bros. who had every confidence it would be a valiant successor to
the previous hits directed by Edwards. In some ways, Tony Curtis doesn’t really
fit the bill as our hero; Edwards preferring Robert Wagner, a choice vetoed by
Jack L. Warner who was worried the recent divorce of Wagner and Natalie Wood
would cast a pall on the entire production.
Jack might have also had the overwhelming success of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot in the back of his
mind, believing Curtis and Lemmon would once more make beautiful music together
– even, if they were living apart and in competition with one another in this
movie.

But Tony Curtis’ participation on The
Great Race proved very costly indeed; his agent, Swifty Lazar insisting on
a salary of $125,000 - $25,000 more than either Jack Lemmon or Blake Edward was
receiving for their work. As for Natalie Wood; she began the film under a cloud
of reluctance, goaded/then bribed by Jack Warner, who assured her the lead in Inside Daisy Clover (1965); a part she desperately
wanted. Unhappy chance for Wood the perceived ‘short shoot’ on The Great Race ballooned in proportion
to its budget; the production eventually doubling from $6 to $12 million,
making it the most expensive comedy ever filmed. The pie fight alone tipped the
scales at a staggering $200,000 for less than ten minutes of screen time. The
shoot proved exhaustive, trying everyone’s patience. But Wood, ever the
professional, kept her energies and spirits up to its completion; shortly
thereafter attempting suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills.

Viewed today, The Great Race
is much more an artifact than an entertainment; a relic even in its own time
and a time capsule for a type of lavishly appointed film-making we are not
likely to see again. There are definite virtues to this production, as already
discussed. But the pluses barely outrank the minuses and what we’re left with
is a fairly sluggish, would-be comedy with more spectacle than laughs. This isn’t
a great film and unlikely to be appreciated as such for some time to come – if ever.
Tastes vary and shift with time, butThe
Great Race was merely passable for me – and infrequently ‘less than’ in spots. Judge and buy
accordingly.

But there’s great news for Warner Home Video’s archive edition Blu-ray:
a peerless mastering effort. This is becoming something of a habit for the WB
Archive, and one definitely championed by yours truly on this blog. I just
sincerely wish Warner would invest in more A-list titles from its vast catalog.
Could we hope for titles like Around the World in Eighty Days, Silk
Stockings, The Student Prince, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Marie
Antoinette, Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Pride and
Prejudice (1940) and so on, and so forth?

Aside: I recently tuned into a Warner Archive podcast between WB VP
George Feltenstein and noir historian, Eddie Muller where Feltenstein seemed genuinely
perplexed the recently remastered Blu-ray edition of Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947) was already in
its forth minting. No kidding, George. If you release it, they will buy! Release
more high profile catalog to hi-def and it will sell! I guarantee it! Alas, a
lot the of the titles currently part of the hi-def archive are not A-list ‘must haves’ for collectors. I don’t know
why this is so startling a find; especially to Feltenstein, who has been the
driving force for catalog restorations and their releases at Warner Home Video
since the mid-1990’s. But I digress.

The Great Raceis everything
you could possibly hope for on Blu-ray; sparkling with deep, richly saturated
colors, superbly rendered contrast, and a dazzling amount of fine detail
evident from beginning to end. The rear projection matte work is more obvious
than ever, but that’s part of the movie’s ‘charm’. There isn’t an age-related
blemish to be seen. This is a clean, crisp and beautifully rendered reference
quality disc that will surely not disappoint.
Better still, the 5.1 DTS audio is a minor revelation, particularly
Henry Mancini’s score. It takes on a sumptuous sonic life of its own. Dorothy
Provine’s ‘He Shouldn't-A, Hadn't-A,
Oughtn't-A Swang on Me!’ nearly knocked me off my chair. Wow and thank you! The only extra features
are a brief vintage featurette of Edwards at work and a badly worn theatrical
trailer. Bottom line: highly recommended for quality. Warner Home Video is once
again to be congratulated on their efforts. I just hope this means better
movies are coming down this pipeline in similarly pristine 1080p. We’ll wait
and see.

About Me

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor.
He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online's The Subtle Tea. He's also has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.
Last year he finished his first novel and is currently searching for an agent to represent him.
Contact Nick via email at movieman@sympatico.ca